Too Fast to Fall (Jackson Hole 1.10)

Nate shrugged. “He’ll just be happy it’s done and taken care of. And he’ll get bonus points with the wife if her nephew isn’t sent to prison, I suppose.”

“Yeah, I’ll say.”

“Hey, do you mind if I ask Stone a couple of questions just to satisfy my own curiosity?”

“Knock yourself out. We’ll probably let him go before nightfall, anyway.”

The cameras were still running, but at this point, Nate didn’t care. Hell, even if the drugs had been real, he wasn’t sure he would’ve cared. Ellis’s arrest wasn’t going to make a damn bit of difference in this community. But walking away from Jenny when she’d been in need? That was going to affect Nate’s life in a hell of a lot of ways.

He opened the door. “Ellis,” he said flatly.

“Hey!

” Ellis said brightly, as if he were relieved to see a familiar face.

“How’s it going?”

His smile vanished. “Not great, man.”

“I see that.”

“Shit,” he muttered. “Did Jenny send you in here to kick my ass? Tell her I’m sorry, all right?”

“Sorry for what?” Nate asked, taking a seat and bracing himself for the answer. Actually, that wasn’t true. No matter what the answer was, it was going to tear through Nate like a blade. Because either she’d made a fool of him or Nate had done it all on his own.

“Dragging her into this.”

“Well, she’s pretty pissed that you got her arrested.”

“I swear to God I don’t know what she was doing out there! Where did she even come from?”

“That doesn’t make any sense. There’s nothing out there. She didn’t just run across you.”

Ellis slumped. “She must have followed me. She was suspicious about what I was doing and worried I was in trouble.”

“You’re really saying she didn’t know anything?”

“Are you kidding? She thought I was doing landscaping.”

“In the middle of winter?”

“I told her I was working the plows and signing contracts for the spring. I mean, I am picking up a few shifts here and there. And hey, I was kinda doing landscaping, you know?” Ellis’s laugh sounded like a broken toy.

Nate felt sick now, remembering the way he’d looked through her as he’d passed. “So she wasn’t lying,” he murmured.

“Jenny? No way. She’d never have anything to do with drugs. Hell, whenever I came home smelling like pot, she’d make me sleep on the couch. That shit with her mom, you know?”

No, he didn’t know. He didn’t know a lot of things about Jenny, because he’d been too busy asking questions about Ellis, just as she’d said.

Ellis scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Shit. I can’t believe she was arrested. She only wanted to help. She thinks I can’t take care of myself. She always felt like she needed to take care of me, and she couldn’t deal with that. And when Jenny can’t deal with something, she leaves.”

“Is that what she did to you?”

“Yep. Middle of the night, she left me a letter and her ring and took off. I never saw her again until two months ago. Didn’t even know where she was until last year.” He sighed. “I always thought she’d come back to me, but she never even came through town again.”

What had she said? She wasn’t racing anything; she just wanted to go somewhere else? Nate tapped his knuckles on the table and stood.

“Hey, they’re going to let her go, right?”